Review - Elaine Stritch at Town Hall

I'm taking up a collection to buy Elaine Stritch a pair of pants.

Not that she'd wear them, of course. Ever since roaring into Broadway legend status with her solo show, At Liberty, Ms. Stritch has been doing very well for herself in her now trademark ensemble of black stockings, high heels and a loose-fitting, white tailored shirt. Because, as a cabaret and concert artist, she is, above anything else, a canny actress who knows that any attempt to blend in puts her at a disadvantage.

So when dealing with a problem that's a natural occurrence in the careers of older performers, failing memory, she does not take the polite route of having lyrics sheets available or, as many great older cabaret artists tend to do, quickly requesting a prompt and then immediately plunging back into the material. No, Stritch makes no apologies for the fact that this 86-year-old broad is going to forget her lines and lyrics many times throughout the evening. Accept that it's a part of the show or you're in for a miserable time.

But understand that there's nothing sad about watching her frequent glances to her piano-playing music director, Rob Bowman, which are followed by his enthusiastic cues. It is a well-polished partnership with just enough improvisation to invigorate the tightrope-walking spectacle.

"Wait'll you see what you're gonna see," she warns her audience with a little chuckle and a big smile that tells us we're all in for an adventure.

Her performance for Town Hall's Broadway Cabaret Festival this past Saturday night was an encore of her recent Café Carlisle tribute to the lyrics and (usually) music of Stephen Sondheim. And while Stritch is highly regarded as a master of Mr. Albee's acid tongue and Mr. Coward's elegant cadence, it is with Sondheim's wry realism that she's found her soul mate. Her performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch" (with which she needed no prompting) is, as ever, an arch commentary on Manhattan class warfare mixed with sobering self-reflection, but when she performs "Every Day A Little Death" unaccompanied, as a dramatic monologue, with no regard to the lyric's rhyme pattern, the depths of emotional defeat she reaches are stunningly raw. Likewise, she downplays the marching rhythm of "A Parade In Town" and turns it into a quiet soliloquy about being forgotten.

But this is Elaine Stritch, so you know there's gonna be the funny. As soon as the band began playing the familiar Bernstein vamp to "I Feel Pretty," there were guffaws of anticipation from the house and the actress' deadpan glare on lines like "It's alarming how charming I feel" fulfilled expectations. Eyes certainly must have widened as she began the verbally demanding "Everybody Says Don't" and indeed, this one did tax the performer's memory. But the back and forth teamwork between singer and accompanist as they both barreled through the text provided the evening with one of its most exciting and eventually exuberant moments, earning cheers for their effort. There were also cheers for her throwaway delivery of, "Here she is, boys," signaling that for only her second number of the night she was about to tackle "Rose's Turn." Having informed her guests that she has never been asked to star in Gypsy, Rose's gutsy declaration that she could have been than all of 'em is fueled by the actress' determination to prove than she would have been pretty damn good herself.

By the time she's modestly chirping "Thank You So Much" at the end of the evening, nobody would have dared to doubt it.

Photo by Walter McBride/WM Photos.

Click here to follow Michael Dale on Twitter.

Click here for Michael Dale's Twitterized theatre reviews.

To post a comment, you must register and login.